Howard Bryant’s hiring by the Washington Post for the Redskins’ beat was announced today by his new boss, Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, the Post’s sports editor.

The email read:

“Matt Vita (Garcia-Ruiz’s No. 2) and I are delighted to announce that Howard Bryant, a columnist with the Boston Herald, will be joining us as our new Redskins beat reporter, working with Jason LaCanfora. Howard has focused primarily on baseball during his career but has shown a wide range of skills and great versatility. His sports beat experience includes one that should prepare him well for the popularity of the Redskins: covering the New York Yankees for the Bergen Record. At the San Jose Mercury News he covered the Oakland A’s but before that he was the online editor for sports at the paper and covered telecommunications for the business section (under a nasty taskmaster named Jonathan Krim - a Post Staff writer on the news side). Howard has written two books: ‘Juicing the Game,’ a look at the steroids crisis in baseball and ‘Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston.’ His start date is Nov. 14, just in time for the Raiders game.”

Herald sports editor Hank Hyrniewicz, in his first public comments on the move, emailed Shots: “. . . (Howard’s) been a great contributor to the Herald’s sports section for the past three years and I’ve enjoyed working with him during these three years.”

Bryant has been in the DC-area this week searching for housing. In confirming the move to Shots on Monday, “via Cingular Xpress Mail with Blackberry,” Bryant’s subject heading read: “It’s official.”

Shots is also told by someone involved in the move that we shouldn’t be surprised if Bryant’s move to the Post includes some opprtunities down the road on the “news side.” It’ll be worth keeping an eye on, at the very least. There’s more than a fair share of empahsis at the Post on creating news stories from sports subjects.

. . . We’re guessing, despite the shaky ground over at One Herald Square, Hank Herald is about to be deluged with calls from mid-level sports columnists and beat guys all over the land. For a “HUGE” name to leave any paper of stature, the future of the Herald would need to be a whole lot more stable. And Internet people aren’t leaving the Web for Print - not if they have any sense, that is.

Further, it’s probably a needless glance at the Herald’s current roster of writers to look for Bryant’s replacement: this needs to be a minority hire and to think any other way would be naive - not to mention short-sighted by Herald higher-ups.

. . .The one immediate name that Shots would put forth for Hank Herald’s short list is the long-time Hartford Courant sports writer, Desmond Conner . It’s been a while since we’ve read Conner regularly, but he always impressed as someone that really “got it.”

We’d also like to suggest that the move be made quickly and efficiently: NFL crunch time is right around the corner and if the Celtics get going for some reason (Baby Al Becoming a MAN, for instance), it’s going to be vital for the Herald to have more than just Steve Buckley, Gerry Callahan once a week or even the re-addition of Karen Guregian, as general columnists.

The sports section’s voice and brashness needs to be a huge part of any further re-vamping for the Yellow Boxers - the Business page model is a great one to follow. Inclduing, it should be noted, the personality-driven writing introduced this week with brash Brett Arends’ column’s debut on Monday.

Our worst fear for the Herald is that the Bean Counters decide not to fill the spot at all. That would be disastrous.

David Scott writes from a seaside shanty on the shores of Hull, Mass. and can be reached at shots@bostonsportsmediadotcom